2018 Tarsha Gale Cup

Our girls defended OK. In fact, the average weight of our side would have been maybe 10kg a player less than the doggies, but they had no problem stopping their bigger opponents.
In contrast, the bulldogs players had no lateral movement, or movement in any direction really. They just stood there and threw their arms out, and more times than not our girls were able to slip between defenders with only a few outstretched arms coming in contact with them.
The Bulldogs side looked like winning right up till the ball was kicked off - they certainly looked like a big, athletic group against our pretty small side - but they clearly haven't played much. Turnstiles the lot of them.

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After looking at the highlights they definitely need to look at the format.

From what I've seen games are 60 minutes & played in quarters.

So far there has been 15 games.

Only three games have had a result where there was a 12 point or less point difference, with an average winning score of 53-16.

Only four games have had less than a point a minute scored but of those games one had 48 points scored & six goals missed, one had 56 pts & eight misses, one had 58pts & 7 misses.

So when time for kick offs, conversions, hand overs/scrums etc are taken out there would be a try scored virtually every set of six. Might be good & entertaining for the (winning)parents in the stand but it isn't doing much to promote the game, keep the girls on the receiving end of thrashings motivated or doing anything to improve skill levels.

Teams seem to be using squads of over 20 players so next year I would like to see the game change to 13 a side to help improve defence, rein in the blowouts & make games more of a contest where more skill & structure will be needed to break down defences.

As I said earlier I realise the game is in its infancy but to keep moving forward I really think they need to adopt the full team format to ensure its viability.

The odd thing is that the team who scores kicks off, so gives the ball back to the opposition, which means the knights had to hand the ball to the bulldogs 18 times, but either regained it from chasing the kick, or smashed them in a few tackles till they spilled the ball. It wasn't as simple as us scoring every set and them never even touching the ball - we had to monster them out of the ball and then go on to score, which just shows how much of a mismatch it was.

It wasn't as bad as the scoreline looks.
We competed well for long periods, but they were just too experienced and classy in the end.
7 or 8 times we got to the 6th tackle and just took the tackle and handed over the ball. Whoever the coach is, he hasn't got around to teaching them about 6th play options yet.

For a side like us. Imagine how bad it'd be for the Bulldogs & Raiders girls, 4 losses, no wins & probably been annihilated every single time. It must be just be hold on for dear life, dust yourself off & repeat for them every week.

The weird thing is that the side that scores kicks off, so when we beat the Bulldogs by 92-4 the Bulldogs had the same number of possessions as we had (every time we scored we gave the ball back to them).
The game basically went, we kicked off and then tackled them so hard they spilled the ball, picked it up and scored within 2 or 3 tackles - rinse and repeat 15 or so times.